Jay-Z’s music streaming company TIDAL has been accused of fabricating streaming numbers for Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo and Beyoncé’s Lemonade when the albums were first released on the platform in 2016. Writers at Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv grew suspicious of the high streaming numbers – 250 million for The Life of Pablo in 10 days, and 306 million for Lemonade in 15 days – considering TIDAL’s claimed subscriber-base is only 3 million users. A year-long investigation, involving close collaborations with music research firm Midia and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s Center for Cyber and Information Security (CCIS), has allegedly validated the suspicions of inflated numbers.

DN, Midia and CCIS obtained and analyzed streaming data for numerous subscribers, who appeared to have artificially high listening rates for the two albums on the platform. In a series of interviews with some of those subscribers, DN reveals disbelief at the data, with listeners claiming they could have not possibly generated such statistics (like listening to Lemonade 180 times in 24 hours.) CCIS’ analysis shows that numerous methods were allegedly used to enhance play counts at specific times for those two specific albums. For The Life of Pablo, TIDAL is accused of duplicating plays for over 1 million subscribers at the same two time points. For Lemonade, the pattern is more complicated, but still consistent with automated behavior.

Since streaming rates correspond to royalty payments, TIDAL allegedly inflated the value of the impacted tracks “at the expense of other artists.” According to reports by TIDAL, the company paid Beyoncé’s label Sony $2.5 million for Lemonade and paid West’s label Universal €2 million for The Life of Pablo.

If the accusations find enough grounding, it is possible that TIDAL executives could be sued for causes of action such as collusion and/or fraud. Illegal cooperation between parties, internal or external, to inflate streaming numbers and thus increase royalty payments for certain artists is clearly illegal and fraudulent. Although there is no precedent, if TIDAL is found to have manipulated numbers, then Sony and Universal would probably be required to pay back some funds plus a possible penalty, similar to a clawback.